My Best Gift Finds Under $25

Phone storage can always be a problem, especially if your techie friends have a camera that shoots 4K video and they like to take along their entire music collection. If you or someone you know is that person, check out the 64GB Sandisk OTG Flash Drive. The 64GB version is a measly $19.74 with free Amazon Prime shipping. It features a MicroUSB connection on one side and a full size USB connection on the other. Not only is it great for additional storage, but it also works wonders for transferring files back and forth between a PC and your mobile device.

Amazon: 64GB Sandisk OTG Flash Drive

At $19.99, the Jackery Bar External Battery is quite a deal for a 6,000 mAh portable battery solution. It features enough juice to power up your iPhone 6 three times or your larger devices twice. The Jackery is assembled with only top grade Panasonic rechargeable cells, so there is no need to worry about reliability. It also features an 18 month warranty. The Jackery Bar External Battery is $19.99 and ships free with Amazon Prime to arrive in time for getting it under the tree.

Amazon: Jackery Bar External Battery

If you know someone that has been swapping out their old 16GB MicroSD card from phone to phone for the last few years, it might be time to get them something a bit newer for their stocking. Sure, 16GB was big a few years back, but now with the SanDisk 64GB class 10 MIcroSD cards running under $25, it’s a great time to grab one. This item also ships free with Amazon Prime and is just $22.99 for the 64GB model. With a bit less budget restriction, you can jump up to a 128GB for $49 or a 200GB for $99.99. That said, the 64GB should be more than enough upgrade for those looking upward from 16GB or even 32GB.

Amazon: SanDisk Ultra 64GB MicroSD Card

For something a bit more stocking friendly, the Peres Mini 2-in1 OTG adapter and MicroSD reader is a home run. This little guy is under $5 and is shipped free as an Amazon Prime Add-On Item. If you are on a fixed storage phone, or just like to take a ton of media with you, use those old MicroSD cards that you have upgraded from to store some music or movies on and use this to play them back on your device. It’s very similar to the SanDisk OTG drive above, but this one uses the storage cards you already own, and is less than a Lincoln to drop in a stocking. As an added bonus to families, it is available in 4 different highlight colors.

Amazon: Peres Mini 2-in1 OTG adapter and MicroSD reader

Rounding out our top five under $25 gift ideas for the techie that has it all is the JDB 5-Port High Speed USB Charging Hub. The JDB Hub uses IC Technology to detect the optimum charging speed of your device and automatically changes the power given to that port to match the device. The first port offers 5V/2.4A charging to match the USB 2.0 Quick Charging standards used in devices like the iPhone 6s and Samsung Galaxy S6. The other 4 ports offer standard USB charging for any 1-2A device.  The compact size makes it great for nightstands or desktops. The 5 foot removable power cord also makes it easy to take along where ever it is needed. The JDB Hub also ships free with Amazon Prime and will still arrive in time for Christmas if you order soon. If you are an anti-clutter King or Queen, the JDB Hub will really help get rid of quite a few power plugs and wires around those busy areas.

Amazon: JDB 5-Port High Speed USB Charging Hub

Google Sneakily Deals Another Blow To Microsoft Users

I’ve been using Microsoft’s amazing blogging platform, Live Writer, for longer than I can remember. It was always my go to publisher for my Wordpress and Blogger blogs. In fact, almost every post I have made for this blog has been through Live Writer. Unfortunately, Microsoft discontinued the product after the 2012 version, though it continued to work for me well after that point. Last week however, I was struck with the error in the image above. I figured Blogger was down and I would save it and try again later… Boy was I wrong…

As it turns out, Google, the owner of the Blogger services, performed yet another API change to shut down third party “back door” access. This is the type of access which Live Writer and other 3rd party writing Apps used to send the posts to the service. While Google has done this before in the past, it’s all too apparent that this volley was once again aimed squarely at the Live Writer program as it appears to be the only program that I use that was affected by the change.

Call it a security update or a maintenance thing, but I will call it out for what it is, Google is blocking Microsoft’s access to their services one more time. It happened with YouTube and it is happening again with Blogger. It’s only a matter of time before Google really does something terrible and blocks Gmail or something crazy like that from Windows and then we will really see an uproar.

Until then, the open source project version of Live Writer was not affected by this patches that Google put in place this week, which strangely enough is virtually the same coding, but not with Microsoft’s branding. The Open Live Writer program is available at www.openlivewriter.org and is free of charge.